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THE DINING ROOM by A.R. Gurney
Venue: Greenwich 1983
Directed by: Alan Strachan



One of the biggest successes of the 1982 New York Theatre season receives its British premiere.

In a beautifully orchestrated sequence of scenes conceived in a single room and spanning 60 years, the play gradually constructs a mosaic of American life as funny as it is touching and clever as it is true.

The glowing New York reviews have been echoed by several British critics covering the New York season.

Cast
Robin Bowerman
Christopher Godwin
Polly James
Michael J Shannon
Alison Skilbeck
Marcia Warren

Review

A.R. Gurney JR’s The Dining Room is American theatre at its slightest and in a sense, most typical.  The director, Alan Strachan, may be asking us to see it as an equivalent of Alan Ayckbourn, an impression gained by the fact that half of the cast of six have had a close association with Ayckbourn and his plays. But if this is the case, Gurney does not show up well in comparison.  The situations, and in a play like this composed of short episodes there are plenty of them, are trite.  The humour is shallow, the characterisation and dialogue are glib.  Its success on Broadway is mystery. However, it is a heaven-sent opportunity for actors, all six being required to slip effortlessly from infancy to old age, sometimes within seconds, going out through one door as a child, returning through the other as a senior citizen.  And there is no gainsaying that's the Greenwich cast is extraordinarily capable and that watching them is in itself enjoyable.

The dining room is the central theme of the play, and it is the author's intention to show us that how you treat the dining room is how you treat life.  To the oldest members of what one assumes to be several families who have lived in the house, the dining room has been the social centre, the standard-bearer of the household, with its rituals and grudging admission of children.  To the architect in one of the earliest episodes, however, it is a large room just asking to be converted.  Throughout, it is an elegant background to the family dramas, crises and occasional infidelities, many of which fall into a trough of easy sentimentality. Against the handsome table and chairs in Bernard Culshaw’s setting, the cast play up to their strengths, with Polly James very convincing as eager infant, curious teenager, mixed-up wife and bemused old lady, and some excellent support from Marcia Warren, Alison Skilbeck, Michael J Shannon, Christopher Godwin and Robin Bowerman.